Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Ladies, please lock your doors.

These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall

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  Sometimes when reading a mystery or thriller book, when the ending is being telegraphed really hard, I think it must be a misdirection. Then, when the telegraphed ending is revealed as a big shocking twist, I wind up disappointed. This, along with an inability to connect with the main character were two of the main issues I had with These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall. The story follows Mickie Lambert, a twenty something woman who creates “digital scrapbooks” for mostly older adults who […]

The Never Tell Collection

The Ghost Writer by Loreth Anne White

The Other Side of the Road by Andrea Bartz

Scorpions by Rachel Howzell Hall

Everywhere You Look by Liv Constantine

The Bad Friend by Caroline Kepnes

Jackrabbit Skin by Ivy Pochoda

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OK this whole Amazon Kindle and Audible collection is called “Never Tell”. It’s supposed to be about secrets, lies, and mind games. Sounds intriguing, right? Well some of these six stories were really good – like five stars good. And some of them were “but why?” mediocre. Like “I guess this story had to be told, but why?” I’ll rank them in order from five stars to “but why” (according to me of course). Grace Logan, a successful ghostwriter is lured in by a new […]

Basically a digital scrapbook murder mystery

These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall

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I’m just going to start this one by saying that my review is full of spoilers. I don’t know how to talk about this book without ruining it! I’m not sure if anyone reading this review wants to read the book, so I’ll do a little intro, then move onto the spoilers with plenty of warning. The main character is a young woman named Mickie Lambert. I had a realllly hard time connecting to her. She’s in her early 20’s living above her parent’s garage. […]

The Hollow and Lord Edgware Dies + Audible Originals

The Hollow by Agatha Christie

Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie

See How they Run by Rachel Howzell hall

Stories of the Stalked by Lily Baldwin

Free Billy by Don Winslow

Approval Junkie by Faith Salie

Out of Bounds by Chris Ballard

The Dogs of Venice by Stephen Rowley

Island Nation by Peter Heller

Fragments of a Young Conquistador by Lincoln Michel

Song of the Northwoods by Jessica Huang

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The Hollow – 4/5 Stars This is one of the mid-career Poirot novels, and it’s one of the ones where Poirot begins to revise and critique the ways in which crimes are investigated. We begin with a group of people on an estate swooning and hand-wringing about their wonderful, innocent, and sad friend Gerda, who seems to be married to someone who doesn’t love her. This is one of those Christie novels that takes place on a country estate, like several others, and like others, […]

Shelfie: These Toxic Things

These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall

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I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!  I’m using this book as my “Shelfie” – so here’s the picture of the ebook in my Kindle account. (Not nearly as exciting as a physical copy…)  For anyone who has read any of my reviews, it’s probably apparent that I love mystery novels. However, I haven’t read many where the main character is a young black woman who is determined to solve a mystery. Generally, in fact, it’s white women. Middle to upper middle class white women. Which is a […]

Mixed Bag II

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

How it Ends by Rachel Howzell Hall

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton

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Mapping the Interior – Stephen Graham Jones – 3/5 Stars This short novella by Stephen Graham Jones takes two familiar genres, or sub-genres, and puts them together in a space that is interesting, if limited. For one, we have a haunting. In this novella, a 12 year old boy becomes increasingly aware of some kind of supernatural manifestation in his house. Through guesswork and experience, he determines it must be the ghost of his dead father. This guesswork leads the book into its secondary genre, […]



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